Sampurna Das
An emerging theme in the literature (Entwistle, 2000; Kaiser, 2012) is that masculinity uses clothing to subscribe to and reinforce the norms, expectations, and behaviour of their gender. These scholars have underlined the practices of clothing at various historical and cultural moments. Some of the questions dealt with are: What makes a certain cloth masculine? What kinds of masculinities are expressed through these clothes? In this chapter, I add to this ongoing dialogue on the relationship between masculinity and clothing through men's embodied experiences. Data for this chapter is based on the eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork I conducted amongst the Miya community living in river islands ( char ) of western Assam. For this chapter, I have focused on the wardrobes of three Miya men, examining their lungis and trousers through observation and conversation about these clothes. I traced how the materiality of these Miya men's clothes reflected their embodied experiences of masculinity. It revealed a rich description of the lungi and trousers as material cultural artefacts through which these three men negotiated their positions within their community and the wider people of Assam. This chapter seeks to situate the Miya men's embodied experiences of clothing within the concept of hybrid masculinities. Hybrid masculinities as a concept enables us to understand the selective incorporation of identity elements that have been associated with hegemonic masculinities and femininities (Bridges, 2014; Bridges and Pascoe, 2014). The way my research participants negotiated their positions using trousers can be understood as a symbol of hegemonic masculinity. It provides critical insights into the workings of hybrid masculinity.